Page 115 of From This Moment (After We Fall 4)
“I don’t believe you!” I cried. “If that were true, you wouldn’t have hurt me like this!”
“It was just a drink!”
“With the woman Drew fucked while he was married to me? No, that wasn’t just a drink. It was the final sign that this”—I gestured back and forth between us—“can never be. And I was an idiot to think it could.”
“Oh my God.” His face conveyed his shock. “Hannah, I had no idea. You know I didn’t!”
“I don’t know anything except that I need to stay away from you!”
“Please. Just listen to me.” Now both his hands gripped my upper arms, and I was no match for his strength. “My mother set that up. She tricked me into coming to the bar and then left.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“I was just trying to be nice! I didn’t know she was the one! I swear to God I’d have left if I had.” He shook his head. “I should have left anyway. I’m sorry.”
“Too late now.”
“I thought I was doing us a favor,” he went on.
“What?” I shrieked. “How was that doing us a favor?”
“My mother thinks I only fell for you because I never gave myself a chance to fall for anyone else. I thought if I met the damn girl she wanted me to meet, I could go home and say, ‘Guess what, Mom? I met the girl and I’m still in love with Hannah.’ I thought it would help convince her to accept us.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, sobbing uncontrollably now. “It doesn’t even matter because she’ll try something else next. She was never going to accept us, Wes. And you were always going to choose her.”
He shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean the birthday dinner! Do you know how much it hurt me to learn she didn’t want me there and you said okay?”
“No! Because you didn’t tell me! I was just trying to do anything to make things easier on us. I thought I was helping! I love you, Hannah, but I can’t read your mind.”
“I didn’t expect you to read my mind. I expected you to fight for us like you said you would!”
“I’m sorry, I should have considered how it would make you feel. I should have fought back. If it matters to you that much, you can come. Or I won’t go. Whatever it takes,” he pleaded. “I’ll make this right, Hannah. I promise.”
“No more promises.” I closed my eyes, tears dripping off my lashes. “It’s too late.”
“But I love you.”
“It’s not enough, Wes. Love isn’t enough to save us. Face it—we were never meant to be.”
His grip relaxed slightly on my arms, but he didn’t let go. “Do you remember,” he said quietly, “what I said to you the night you married my brother?”
My eyes flew open. Of course I did.
He said the words again, his voice strong and sure. “I knew the moment I saw you that you were the one.” But this time he went on. “The one I’d always love. The one I’d always dream about. The one I’d always wish was mine.”
One of my friends gasped. From the corner of my eye I saw them clutching at each other.
Wes stared me down hard. “It was snowing the day we met. February twenty-fifth. A Tuesday. You were wearing a black shirt with a picture of a pineapple on it. You smiled at me, and I thought, ‘My God, the most beautiful girl in the world just smiled at me.’”
“Wes,” I wept. “Stop. We just weren’t meant to be. It’s too hard. It’s too much.”
“I knew the moment I saw you that you were the one, Hannah. I walked away then because I was too scared to tell you how I felt, and I’ll walk away now because it’s what you want, but you listen to me.” He pulled me closer. “I don’t care what anyone says. I’ve loved you since the day I met you, and I’ll love you until the day I die. And I will never, ever believe it was supposed to be any other way.”
And then he kissed me. Like he should have done then. Like he’d never kiss me again.
And he walked away.
